RE: Confidence: A Basic Politics Puzzle

Crosby_M (CrosbyM@po1.cpi.bls.gov)
Thu, 20 Feb 1997 12:44:12 -0500


On Wednesday, February 19, 1997 9:41 PM, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
<But since no existing system of government "functions", and no system
in history ever has, what is there to lose but the tyranny we know so
well? Since there is no direct evidence of a functioning government,
we have no recourse but reason from axiomatic values to determine a
system that best fits them, and work toward that. When we have that
working, and we can see its flaws that we might not have anticipated,
we can fix them as well.>

I know you said your role in this debate was to be the extremist, to
push the envelope, so maybe somebody also needs to play 'conservative'
- it seems to me that "utter contempt" might be more destructive than
constructive. I have no doubt that anarcho-capitalist approaches would
be better than what we have now; but, are we really ready to call in
the disassemblers and reconstruct everything from the ground up,
according to whose "axiomatic values"? I'm afraid there's a 'small'
problem of several billion people controlling innumerable existing
resources and assets, who feel the current system is "functioning"
quite well, and who might easily misinterpret your stance for tossing
everything overboard, all at once, into Jim Legg's free-for-all
"soup".

Mark Crosby